What Steve Bannon's Return Means for <i>Breitbart</i>
Steve Bannon was always supposed to return to Breitbart News.
When he left his job as executive chairman of the site to join the Trump campaign in August 2016, the move was presented as a temporary leave of absence, his return to Breitbart after the election a fait accompli. Like for many people, Donald Trump’s surprising election changed everything for Bannon, who was given a top job in the White House. Breitbart continued on without him. It hired mainstream journalists and lost some of its most controversial staff. But he never left in spirit, and obtained an ethics waiver that allowed him to communicate with the company. During his time away, Breitbart reflected his point of view and sometimes went after Bannon’s rivals in the White House.
Bannon has now been ousted from the administration and is back at , which welcomed him home as a “populist hero” last week (and has been selling fidget spinners with his face on them). The former chief strategist has axes to grind and a place where he can grind them; no longer chained to the internal drama at the White House, he’s free to go after his enemies in the administration and in has already been doing this; a case in point is its sustained campaign against H.R. McMaster, a top rival of Bannon’s. So ’s product itself seems likely to remain essentially the same.
